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….
"…"
I don't know what the others were thinking, but I desperately wanted to aggressively massage my face with my palm.
"Care to satisfy my curiosity? Why exactly were you touching her shoulder?" Working my facial muscles, I arched a characteristic, mocking eyebrow, inviting him to confess all his mortal sins.
"I-I-I…" The kid in the cheap suit practically started vibrating with nerves. Am I really that terrifying?
"Alright, fine." I shifted Gungnir, currently masquerading as a cane, to my other hand.
"Perhaps you're right, and there are things in the multiverse I'm simply better off not knowing. Back to the main issue! I need a couple of hairs to forge these amulets and temporarily shield you from the universe's attempts to disintegrate you."
I looked over at the "veteran" Peter, who was currently dedicating every ounce of his willpower to not staring at the redhead.
The redhead, by the way, was doing the exact same thing. It's one thing to rationally understand alternate dimensions; it's entirely another to see the face of the man you just buried sitting across from you.
Yes, he was slightly older, a bit more battered, and sporting a five o'clock shadow, but their faces were identical. Judging by how the girl kept flinching, his voice, his mannerisms, and his micro-expressions were identical, too.
"Mr. Parker," I said. Both the man in sweatpants and Mary Jane jumped in unison. "This applies to you, too. Unless you harbor some hidden masochistic tendencies…"
"Here," he sighed wearily, reached up, and unceremoniously yanked a couple of hairs right out of his scalp.
"Right." Gwen hesitated for a moment, clearly wanting to do the same but lacking the sheer exhaustion required to rip her own hair out.
I saved her the trouble by summoning a small, razor-sharp dagger from my pocket dimension and offering it to her.
With a grateful nod, the blonde sliced off a tiny lock of hair.
"Alright, your turn," I sighed, taking the dagger back and holding out my hand to the kid.
"What for?"
"So I can clone you, grow a supervillain in a vat, and use him to conquer the Multiverse."
"…" Yeah, his sense of humor was practically non-existent.
"A genetic sample from a native bearer of Spider-Powers from this specific universe will allow me to calibrate the spells much faster and easier. It took me a solid six hours to calibrate your three 'colleagues'."
"Okay," the kid bought it. Not that I was outright lying to him, but… okay, yes, I was lying.
The speed of the "enchantment" was mostly due to the fact that I'd already practiced on the others, and because the blonde and the battered Parker were clearly from universes very "adjacent" to this one, their molecular structure was already highly compatible with the local reality.
Not enough to adapt on their own, but vastly more compatible than the walking anime paradox and the literal cartoon pig.
"Excellent. Now, while I perform high-tier divine magic on my knee, why don't you regale us with the tale of how and when you got your powers?" I tried to arrange my features into the most welcoming, trustworthy expression possible.
"I was bitten by a radioactive spider!" the kid blurted out, instantly breaking into a sweat and standing at attention like a raw recruit. Tsk. I definitely overdid the 'welcoming' expression. I could see it in his eyes, I was officially terrifying him.
"Go o-o-on," I prompted the suddenly silent victim. Hey, why not? I wasn't going to pass up learning the secret of Spider-Man's origins just because the kid under interrogation was shaking in his boots.
"I went with my uncle to paint some walls…" And the kid spilled his guts.
He rambled about transferring to a fancy new school, leaving all his old friends behind. About how his cop dad just didn't understand his tortured, artistic soul, but his Uncle Aaron totally did, rescuing him from the cruel world by bonding over their shared hobby of defacing public property with vulgar graffiti.
And, most importantly, he mentioned the little spider with the glowing legs that he had swatted after it bit him.
A spider that was currently lying dead in the very subway tunnels that led directly to a hidden basement lab.
The same lab where the local Peter had been fighting the Green Goblin before being killed by the Kingpin, but not before handing this kid the "goober" and asking him to finish the job.
His story was frantic and jumbled, but my brain easily isolated the key data points.
First, and most importantly: he knew exactly where the dead spider I needed for my research was located.
Second: he knew the direct route into the Kingpin's underground lab, right to the inter-universal transport machine.
Third: he was directly responsible for the local Parker's death and our subsequent displacement.
The kid himself, naturally, didn't admit this, and he likely didn't fully comprehend the gravity of it.
But the sheer fact that Peter had to divert his attention to save this kid, wasting precious seconds on brief conversations instead of breaking through to the control panel to sabotage the device... that was enough to draw conclusions.
Even the kid admitted, without a second thought, that Spider-Man had been just a couple of seconds too late.
And you know what? The mosaic suddenly clicked into place! I realized it! I understood!
This isn't tolerance! This isn't a woke agenda! It's the exact opposite!
The big bosses at Marvel aren't bending the knee to diversity quotas, they are trolling them!
They are actively mocking the whole concept! It's a massive conspiracy!
It started somewhere in the late 2000s, right around the second Iron Man movie.
That's when this trope began: the supposedly positive, "heroic" token diversity character turns out to be the biggest asshole in the entire plot, or even the primary catalyst for all the problems!
Let's review: Colonel Rhodes betrays his best friend, exploits the biometric access given to him to break into Tony's home, steals his most valuable, world-changing property, and then nearly kills Tony while doing it, giving absolutely zero shits about the lives of the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of their brawl.
Then, he hands the stolen tech over to the very government stooges his loyal friend would have died before surrendering it to, which significantly helps the main antagonist.
And at the end of the film, when by all the laws of moral storytelling he should repent and apologize, he brazenly keeps the stolen suit for himself, and the narrative acts like it's totally fine and justified.
Or take the Thor movie, literally my own "non-fictional" history.
Heimdall! He is the one to blame for everything!
Both there and here! His one and only job description was to stand there and guard the door, but he completely ignored his duties.
As a result, we get an exiled heir to the throne and a massive, galactic-scale headache for countless innocent people.
Sure, he helps out later and acts all brave and righteous, but it's still his fault, without his deliberate negligence, the entire subsequent apocalyptic clusterfuck would never have happened!
Or The Avengers! That entire mess started because the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. decided he was the smartest guy in the room.
"I am Nick Fury! I am a badass! I am the defender of Earth! I think I'll just poke this alien, divine artifact of infinite power with a stick and see what happens! What could possibly go wrong?"
Oops! An alien invasion happens, and New York nearly gets vaporized by a nuclear missile. But hey, he helped assemble the team to fix the mess he started, so he's a Hero!
Let's just have him deliver a badass speech at the end of the movie about how "They'll come back, because they'll need us," and pretend he wasn't the one who built WMDs out of Tesseract energy in the first place... At least, until he decides to pull some more bullshit, like building a fleet of Project Insight Helicarriers with brainwashing algorithms designed to hold the entire planet hostage at gunpoint.
And why not? He's the designated Good Guy! He won't even get fired, he's fulfilling a quota!
…
New Fic is out name: I'm Soldier Boy and I'm Back! (The Boys)
Book is tagged below. Mass release on sunday.
….
If you want to read ahead by 20+ chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]
[email protected]/Yggdrasil_Loki